


Away From You

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s09e07 Bad Boys, M/M, emotional/sexual tenison, suggested underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4093054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The ghost of body heat in the bed beside him may all be in his imagination, but the desperate pit of emptiness in his gut…that was very real. So, was the fear that had set to gnawing at his bones...</em>
</p><p>What was really on Dean's mind during his time at Sonny's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Away From You

'Dude, quit you're fuckin' moanin' so the rest of us can sleep!' 

The harsh and cruel whisper sounded from down the length of the dormitory and brought Dean the rest of the way out of his nightmare.

'Fuckin' newbie.'

The voice belonged to Tyler Benson. He was two months away from eighteen and raring to be cut loose from Sonny's Home for Boy's. He swore a lot. Not that Dean didn't swear. He did. But he usually had good reason to. It wasn't to show off, or just to be cruel, or make himself sound all big and important like Tyler was prone to do. Dean swore when things were getting down to the wire in a hunt and he or Dad one was about five seconds from checking out without a stroke of luck, twist of fate, or a fucking miracle. He swore when John called after a week long absence and said he'd be another two or three days which really meant more like another week, and the money he'd left to feed Sammy had been inadequate in the first place and was already down to just spare change in Dean's front pocket by the time John called to say he'd be longer than he expected.

That's what had landed him here with Tyler at Sonny's farm, in fact. 

Sure, it had been a dumb move on Dean's part to take the last ten bucks he had and buy into the little poker game at the back of the convenience store at the end of the block from the motel they were staying in, but John had called that afternoon and said he'd be at least another three days, and their rations had run out two days ago, and that was with Dean surviving on a handful of stale cheerios, a couple of caramels he'd unearthed from the bottom of his duffle and the only thing that they never seemed to run out of…black coffee. The ten bucks Dean had in his pocket wasn't going to get enough groceries to get Sammy through the next week or more—which was what Dean had to bank on regardless of what John said—much less feed them both. He hadn't wanted to go all in, but the buy in for the game was fifteen and one of the other players had thought Dean's bluster and bravado was so amusing, he'd offered to front him the other five. 

Dean was good at poker. He still had a tell or two but it took a while to root them out. His downfall this particular night, though, wasn't his tells or a lapse in his ability to read a bluff from a mile away. It was just sheer dumb luck and the turn of the cards. So, he'd left the game with his pockets empty and a hard knot of fear in his gut wondering how he was going to feed his brother breakfast when he'd made his next dumb and desperate move and tried to lift a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter from the grocery store next door, and that, as they say, was that.

Dean ignored Tyler's taunting and rolled over on his mattress. It creaked, but it was probably one of the softer and warmer places he'd slept in a long time. It was only lacking one thing.

No matter how narrow the bed, or how warm or cold it was, or how many times John had thrown a fit about it in the last two years, Dean was used to having Sammy in bed with him. 

It had started when Sam was less than a year old. Right after the fire in Lawrence, in fact. Sam would start to fuss in the night and Dean would be the first to wake, and if he didn't need fed or changed, Dean would quiet him by climbing over the side of his playpen and curling around him, tucking him into the small hollow of his chest and belly, and slinging an arm across him to keep him from rolling away in the night.

As Sam grew up and grew older, he grew out of a lot of things, but sleeping with Dean was not one of them. There were motels where John wouldn't be and an extra bed for the taking, or a house they were renting or squatting in where Sam could have an entire room to himself, but he inevitably ended the night curled into the shelter of he brother's warm body, no matter where he might have started out. 

Dean had grown accustomed to it. Even when Sam had suddenly turned into some mutant human furnace over the last year or so and had Dean sweating through most nights as he sprawled on top of his brother, Dean didn't mind. He was used to the weight and the warmth, the feel of all that soft, sweet smelling skin pressed against him, the slip and slide and slither of Sam's silken hair across his chest and against his neck and through his fingers. He was even getting used to the knobby elbows and joints, the sharp shoulders, and sharper hipbones.

So, here, alone, in this reasonably comfortable bed, in this dormitory that was kept at a very comfortable temperature for the onset of a New England autumn, Dean was shivering under his well used, but still very serviceable blankets, suffering from a hyperthermia of the soul.

And it wasn't only that.

The ghost of body heat in the bed beside him may all be in his imagination, but the desperate pit of emptiness in his gut…that was very real. So, was the fear that had set to gnawing at his bones the moment the deputy had dumped him here saying his father had told them to 'let him rot in jail.' John had no idea _why_ Dean had done what he did. He wasn't bound to ask, either. He only knew that Dean had broken the one most important tenant John had laid out for him: take care of Sammy. And now Dean wasn't around to take care of Sammy.

He worried about what John would do with the kid. 

By the time Dean was ten, John was already deep into training him how to hunt the same things he hunted. By the time he was fourteen, he'd been on a handful of hunts, and just last month, he'd been out helping John put down a pair of Werewolves. He still had the bruises on his arms and back to show for it. The times John took Dean with him, and there was no place close or safe to leave Sam, he'd drop him at Father Jim's or Bobby's. That was happening less and less, now, though. John was taking it into his head that Sam was old enough to be on his own at twelve. Hell, Dean had been left alone at the age of _eight_ with Sam to take care of in John's absence, so there was no good reason Sam couldn't manage a day or two or possibly three on his own. 

Not a week, though. A week was too much. Just the thought of a couple days was enough to make Dean's skin crawl and his stomach hurt, but a week was right out. No way in hell he'd let Sam out of his sight for so long. No matter how competent the kid claimed to be or actually _was._ But there was no telling if John thought or felt the same. Judging on past experience, Dean would have to go with a 'no' on that one, and that was what had him moaning at nightmares in his sleep. Nightmares of Sam being stolen from his bed because John had left him alone, or lying bloodied at the claws or teeth of some monster because John had decided to take him on a hunt in Dean's stead.

Dean was usually pretty quiet about his nightmares. He'd learned early on that John had no patience for the fanciful flirtations of his sons' minds no matter how dark they got, so he never spoke of them, and rarely cried out in his sleep or made noise. But Sam was usually there, too, pressed up against him, silken hair tangled maybe a little too tightly in his fist, skinny limbs wrapped around him, breath warm and alive against the curve of his throat, and waking to that always put Dean at ease. Sammy was a natural balm whose mere presence was able to soothe and quiet Dean's racing heart and was second only to Mary's soft whispers and close hugs that were only a hazy memory and did him little good now on the nights his dreams ran red with fire and blood. 

He fisted his pillow closer, drawing it down under his chin, and buried his nose and mouth against it, as if it could possibly be a surrogate for his brother's soft, silken strands, and huddled further down under the blankets and tried to ignore the wracking shivers that would leave him aching and stiff in the morning.

——

Dean was splashing cold water on his face in attempt to diminish the dark circles under his eyes when one of the younger kids—Barney was it?—came up behind him.

'Who's Sammy?'

Dean swung his gaze up to the mirror. It was hot and hard and dangerous, and the kid backed up a step without realizing.

'What?'

'Wh-Who's S-Sammy?' Barney stammered.

Dean shut off the taps and grabbed a towel from the shelf. He hid his face in the terrycloth and took a deep steadying breath. No one here knew about Sam. Not even Sonny. Dean wasn't stupid. He hadn't given out John's name. The authorities had dredged it up, and it wasn't like it was his real one, anyway. And he certainly hadn't mentioned his baby brother to anyone. 

'What's it to you?' he surprised himself by asking.

Barney flushed a little, looked away from Dean's cutting eyes that reappeared in the mirror. 'You just—just say his name in your sleep. A lot.'

Dean ducked his head to hide the brief widening of his eyes and the hint of a blush that crawled across his cheeks. 'He's nobody.'

'Doesn't sound like nobody,' Barney insisted, but in a voice so soft that he could have been talking to himself, and Dean could have left it at that except that he didn't.

'And what the hell makes you think that?' Dean asked, throwing the towel in the hamper and turning on the short, plump kid who wore glasses and was definitely Sam's kind of geek, and who Dean outweighed by at least forty pounds and six inches.

'Look, man,' Barney put his hands up in front of him, palm out. 'I'm not going to say anything to anyone. Doesn't matter to me if you, you know…swing that way.'

Dean couldn't hide the shock in his face that time, and it sent Barney scurrying back to the dorm to get dressed. Dean turned back to the sink, turned the cold water back on full blast and stuck his whole head under the faucet. 

Jesus H. Christ. Now, not only was he having nightmares, but he was moaning his brother's name in his sleep like some wanton whore. That was dangerous. The nightmares were bad enough. No telling what might slip out of his mouth in the unprotected hours of the night, or in what language; but for _that_ to be lurking so close to the surface…

Dammit.

Dean had fought long and hard over the last six months to dispel the strange aching want that had settled in and made itself at home behind his ribs. It was a like having a rock in his chest, putting pressure on his lungs and heart at the most inopportune moments. Moments like when Sam was roaming their motel room in nothing but his track shorts, all sharp joints and knobby spine and ribs that sat way too close to the skin for Dean's comfort because the kid was growing like a weed, even though he was still a skinny waif that would blow away in a stiff wind. Moments like when Sam would step out of the bathroom, pale skin still damp, dark hair dripping, with a towel slung low and barely holding onto those perfect, jutting hipbones. Moments like when Sam was still asleep and sprawled across the bed, tangled in the sheets, and the first soft light of morning crept across the room and traced every flowing line and curve of Sam's beautiful, bare back in gold.

'Dammit,' Dean swore again, out loud this time. If he kept up this line of thinking, it was going to be his dick he needed to stick under the cold faucet. He slapped the water off and grabbed another towel.

Sam was twelve. Twelve, for chrissakes! And the irony wasn't lost on Dean when he thought about his brother pale and stretched out and open for him on a bed in juxtaposition with the idea that he still couldn't stand the thought of the kid being left on his own for more than seventy-two hours. Trouble was, Sam had reached that age that kids do when one minute they're acting all adult and wanting their independence and the right to choose and telling off any adult in a one block radius, and then you blink and they're sitting, legs akimbo, on the floor amidst a battle between GI Joes and Transformers and look for all the world like they're only six and don't have a care in the world.

The first time Dean had looked up and seen more than just his fresh faced baby brother, with that little tiny bit of puppy fat still clinging to his cheeks, was on a salt and burn John had deemed safe enough for Sam to tag along. For education's sake, John had said. Was about time the boy started to learn what was what, and get some real world experience. 

The ghost was pretty docile. Dean had almost felt sorry for her. She hadn't been causing any dangerous trouble, just mild disturbances at an Inn that shared a property line with the cemetery where she'd been buried after dying in childbirth a hundred years ago in the stone manor that had provided the skeletal structure for the inn. Dean and John had dug the grave up and Sam had tossed in the salt and doused the dry, old bones with lighter fluid. Dean snapped open his Zippo and handed it over to Sammy with a grin and jutted his chin toward the grave. Sam had grinned back and dropped the lighter in the hole and a gratifying _whoosh_ of flames and sparks had leapt up, prompting Dean to fist Sam's jacket and draw him back a step.

In the moment he saw Sam's profile in the flickering firelight, hazel eyes aglow and crinkled at the corners with that huge grin that pulled his dimples out in sharp relief, Dean felt like he'd fallen over the edge of that grave and into the fire himself. His whole body flushed under a wave of heat that seared his veins and exhausted his lungs of any usable oxygen. He was glad beyond imagining for the darkness and leaping shadows that would never let John or Sam pin down the expression that must have crossed his face as his heart flipped, his gut clenched, and his dick twitched all at once at the ethereal, demigod-like picture Sam cut just standing there in the light of the fire and smiling like all the secrets of the world had suddenly been laid open to him.

'Dammit,' he swore again.

His nights were about to become that much less restful now that he knew he had to keep himself at least half aware so that he didn't fucking moan his brother's name in his sleep anymore. He threw the towel away into the hamper with its damp brethren. Aw, hell, it was probably for the best anyway. The nightmares were almost becoming more than Dean could stand, waking to his stomach cramped with fear and worry every morning, and his skin clammy with sweat. He didn't need that. It would ruin his already precarious reputation here, and he couldn't have that.

——

Dean had been at Sonny's home for a month when the man himself took him out to the local diner. A quaint place called Cus's. Dean didn't really care what kind of food they had or how many inches of grease it was or wasn't swimming it because he'd seen pie when he walked in, sitting in one of those clear cases with the turn style, all pre-cut and waiting for the scoop of ice cream on the side. 

'Still can't raise your pop,' Sonny said.

Dean shrugged and dragged a couple of french fries through his ketchup. 'He'll turn up when he's ready.' _And have a blade to your balls and a gun to your head before you even see him coming._ Yeah, that was John. Invisible until he was goddamn good and ready to be seen. Obviously a trick his eldest son had yet to master, hence the current living arrangements. 

'You know, you could stay here.'

Dean glanced up, felt a shock skip across his nerve endings that he couldn't immediately recognize. Hope, maybe?

'You're doin' real good in school. You made the wrestling team,' Sonny continued.

Dean just stared.

'Maybe if you…decided to stay. You'd rest a little easier,' the man said and leaned forward just a bit. Posture of concern. Dean recognized it. He'd already practiced and learned that one from John. Needed to give the vics an honest sense of safety and concern in order to get them to talk.

Dean remained silent. Sonny waited.

'Dean, I know you're not sleeping well. It's obvious by the circles under your eyes, and Barney said—'

'What did Barney say?' 

Dean was suddenly all hunter—or maybe hunted?—eyes narrowed a fraction, blood suddenly hot, muscles tensing to strike or escape. He could run from here. He could get out that door and far enough away to get lost long enough to make it out of town and then find John on his own. If anyone could find John when John had gone to ground, it was Dean. And the thought had not occurred to him until just this moment, and that was the biggest surprise of all, and probably the one that actually kept him in his seat. 

Sonny held up a placating palm. 'Only that you had nightmares. Kept you up most nights.' He paused. 'Anything you want to talk about?'

Dean's instant answer was 'no,' but he thought about it for a split second too long and lost his voice all together. Could he tell Sonny? In a round about way, could he reveal the deep and unrequited love in his gut that was twisting him in knots, together with the fear, and all for the sake of his little brother? Could he ask him what the fuck he was supposed to do with that? Or would Sonny read too much into it with that oddly serious perception he had and figure out it was his baby brother he was talking about and then remand him to the nearest mental facility to be locked up where the nightmares could come and destroy him for good and all. 

Dean shuddered minutely and opened his mouth.

'Can I get you guys anything else?'

'Oh, hey Robin,' Sonny said, nodding up at a pretty little thing with soft straight brunette hair pulled back in a plain clip, wearing a nicely snug but totally unrevealing yellow polo; and Dean closed his mouth and looked and admired and thought twice bout telling Sonny anything else at all because—Robin was it?—was looking at him with the shy, blushing, twitchy smile from beneath long lashes that so often answered the Winchester charm, and Dean felt his insides loosen just a fraction, not hardly anything worth noticing, but maybe just enough that he could sleep a little tonight with the image of this soft, feminine thing in his mind to help block out the blood and wanting.

'Robin, this is Dean,' Sonny said. 'Dean. Robin.'

——

It was good for a little while. Another month or so at any rate. 

The nightmares didn't go away, but Dean had something to distract himself now, to help hold the fear at bay. He had thin, supple arms wrapping around his shoulders to adjust his fingers on the frets of a guitar; warm, damp breath below his ear that he consciously refused to equate to Sam's when it huffed against his neck while they slept curled into each other; and soft, giving lips that tasted like sweet tea and Chapstick and pressed shy and tentative to his. 

These were good things, things that he let cover up the still sharp pang of want in his gut, and guide him to the belief that maybe—just maybe—his father had meant what he said and would leave him to this life. He might eventually go stark raving crazing for all the fear and worry over his little brother, but it would mean an ordinary life, with an ordinary girl, working an ordinary job like Sonny had suggested after having seen Dean's gift with all things combustion engine related inside his first week on the farm when he had repaired a mower and gotten the tractor up and purring like a kitten instead of wheezing like an old asthmatic lion. It was a life he had secretly pined for since Mary's death, a life he was striving for, encouraged by John's repeated and automatic litany of 'Someday soon, Dean' or 'Maybe next year, Dean' or 'Let me just get through this next job, and we'll settle for a bit, Dean.' Fourteen years and he was still clinging to the flagging hope in those mindless utterances like Spanish moss to a great Oak. Trouble was the moss eventually killed the Oak, and Dean knew if he clung too tightly, he would kill the hope. Kill the dream.

But Robin's warm eyes made it seem possible in bright, sharp moments when she looked at him like she was mulling him over, slowly coming to a decision that he could be worth holding onto for a lifetime. That scared him while it thrilled him at the same time, and he tried to look back at her without the shadows that twelve years of fire and blood and salt had put in his eyes, and consciously told himself not to be disappointed that hers were only a dark chocolate and not the variegated kaleidoscope of greens and blues and browns that Sam's were, ever changing from dark to light depending on his mood.

So all this fragile hoping, and tentative groping for a future that he didn't dare let solidify just yet, found him straightening his tie on the ten week anniversary of his being dumped at Sonny's by the town deputy and left by his father. 

He was fiddling with the knot at the mirror when a low rumbling reverberated through his gut before he even heard the Impala's engine purring down the gravel drive. He swallowed thick and hard and gave the tie a swift jerk and closed his eyes, trying to envision Robin in her lavender dress wearing the corsage Sonny had insisted he get her and taking her hand and dancing through the night and maybe kissing her goodnight and then meeting her after school on Monday to study and going on and on like this until in a couple of years he could lay her down on a decent bed and make love to her and give her a ring and ask her to marry him and splay his hand wide on her belly and feel his child growing inside her that he would one day send off to school with a kiss and hug and watch grow up and teach how to play catch and fix car engines and—

The Impala's engine settled into a rough idle, and Dean, brain so easily slipping back on automatic reflex, immediately berated John for not adjusting the timing like he'd said she needed. His eyes popped open and the image in his head dissolved, evaporated like it had never been, and there was a sudden weight on his shoulders that felt like a heavy coat, almost comfortable in its familiarity but wearisome nonetheless. 

'You clean up good,' Sonny said from behind him.

Dean gritted his teeth, swiped his hands down the thighs of his jeans, and turned with an over bright smile. He could play along. He could pretend just a minute longer that he didn't know exactly what was waiting for him downstairs.

'Thank you. You know, uh ... I've never actually been to one of these school dances before.'

Sonny hesitated a fraction, put his booted foot up on the end of the bed. This farce wasn't going to hold.

'Yeah. Look, about that, Dean, your old man's outside …. and, man, he's really something. I tried to tell him what a big night it was for you, Dean, and ask him if he could come back later, but he just said to tell you he had a job, said you'd know what that means.'

Dean felt the tears rush up unbidden, riding the crest of a sob trying to break its way past his ribs, and he smiled, a little cracked and insane and hysterical, just to hold it all back. Because the look in John's eyes when Sonny tried to tell him how important a school dance was? That would have been a priceless thing to see. He almost laughed just because of the stunned disbelief that would have whip-cracked across John's features before the hard anger settled in behind it. 

'This place gave me a second chance,' Sonny said softly. Dean's eyes prickled with the heat of his unshed tears and he glanced away, gaze striking on a snapshot of him and Robin a few weeks ago outside in the back orchard. 'It could be yours, too. I'll…fight for you—to stay—if it's what you want.'

Dean did laugh then, high and tight, and he had to swing away to the window because the tears weren't going to stay at bay now. No one had made him an offer like that before. Not ever. 

The Impala's horn sounded. John's equivalent to a 'hurry-the-hell-up' because somewhere people were probably dying, being sacrificed to the darkness, killed by the slash of claws or the gnash of teeth, and it was John's sacred calling to save them. At least, if you asked him it was.

Dean pushed aside the curtain and looked down through gathering twilight.

The Impala gleamed in silken, glossy black lines below, and hanging out the back window caught in a childlike moment that Dean very rarely saw anymore was Sam. Sam holding out a toy fighter jet to the pale light from the downstairs windows that Dean had bought him at the last Goodwill they'd hit about three months ago after John had left the store with a backward comment over his shoulder that Sam was too old for that sort of thing anymore. Dean had dug deep into his wallet and pulled out his last five and bought it for Sam because he remembered that there was no one there to try and defend his own fast fading childhood for him when his father had handed him a sawed-off instead of a toy soldier set and taken him out back of the motel and taught him to bulls-eye soda cans. 

Dean choked. The sob found its treacherous way past his throat on a rasping breath, and he smiled. He smiled because all the fragile hopes he'd started to build in the shape of a pretty girl with soft brown eyes who worked at a diner and served him pie and liked the idea of being on the arm of a genius mechanic very quietly faded away in the bright light of an impossible future and left Dean to his shadows; and all it took was one look at his shaggy-headed, hazel-eyed kid brother. 

His fingers flexed against his thigh, reacting to the sight of those curls, wanting to push them away from those pretty upturned eyes that would be bright in the soft light right now. His heart thudded loud and hard in his chest. He was almost surprised Sonny couldn't hear it like the clear proclamation it was of the twisted, gut wrenching, bone deep love he had for the boy in the back of that car down there. 

Sam sailed the plane through the air and then glanced upward, catching sight of Dean in the upstairs window. He held up the toy as if in offering, the hint of a question playing across his lifted brow, eyes shining just like Dean knew that they would, dimples sharp and merry in his cheeks.

_Come play with me, Dean?_

The wanting was back with a vengeance, twisting at Dean's gut, nearly doubling him over with its force and that undercurrent of disgust that rode its edges so hard, disgust at himself that he would want to sully this innocence he was looking at now with his own crude desires. The want was for more than just that, though. All of Dean's instincts, every blessed on of them that John had fostered since the first moment he'd laid a screaming baby Sam in Dean's four-year-old arms and told him to take his brother outside as fast as he could, clawed and shouted their way to the surface, demanding him to sacrifice—again and always—anything for himself in order to keep his little brother safe. He wanted to protect Sam. Above anything and all, Sam had to be protected—from the monsters, from the world, from John, even from Dean; and Dean had shouldered that responsibility in the light of a raging fire twelve years ago, making the promise to himself and to his brother before he even had the words to form it in his mind.

He bowed his head. Not in defeat, but as a knight does in fealty, and turned from the window. 

The tears had found a path down his cheeks, and Sonny could make of that what he would. It no longer mattered. Dean's world had narrowed down to the sharp and hyper-focused awareness of a sniper, with his site set on only one thing. Sam. 

He smiled and nodded to himself, tugging at the tie he had so meticulously straightened moments ago, and held out his hand to Sonny.

'Sonny…thank you—for everything. But I've got to go.'


End file.
